


Scott Moir vs. the World

by someinstant



Category: Figure Skating RPF
Genre: 5+1 Things, F/M, Gen, RPF, things i write instead of grading papers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-01
Updated: 2018-04-14
Packaged: 2019-04-16 13:39:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 16,602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14166045
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/someinstant/pseuds/someinstant
Summary: Five things that aren’t true about Scott Moir.  And one thing that is. Except this is fiction, so it’s all lies anyway.Probably.





	1. English and profanity.

**Author's Note:**

> We've established I feel weird about RPF, yes? And also that apparently, 'feeling weird' is not going to be enough to keep me from writing it.
> 
> Also: I'm hoping to get a chapter up a day, since I'm on a week's break right now. We'll see if that's realistic or not, but I feel like I should note-- the rating WILL go up with the last chapter, and when it does, I'm likely going to lock this story to members only, because I am firmly convinced that Ms. Virtue has more than a passing familiarity with fandom.
> 
> And since I promised: [Scott's playlist for Tessa is here.](https://open.spotify.com/user/a7pb4w64e6g4spe8sa9ajxopl/playlist/7LqMkeoUp00RFMvL13pXnh?si=6BbF980qTM-nuMheH_V6Uw)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I know absolutely nothing about hockey, except what I know through _The Mighty Ducks_ and _Check, Please!_
> 
> Which is to say: nothing.
> 
> And also also: I don't speak French! Hats off to friendly strangers who will help you translate for the sake of more accurate fiction writing.

**I. English and profanity.**

It’s Tuesday and fourth period, which means it’s French, and listening lab day, and Scott is drawing gladiator swords in the margins of a worksheet about comparing movies while Mme Cote puts a cassette tape in the player.  

“Pendant l’écoute, veuillez lister ce que le critique aime dans ce film dans la première colonne, et ce qu’il n’aime pas dans la seconde,” she says.  Scott sighs, and jiggles his knee under the desk. He hates listening lab; the people speaking on tape always go seven million miles a minute, and they don’t sound as clear as Mme Cote.  He can understand her, mostly, but it’s like everything he thinks he knows disappears when someone else speaks. He shakes his head, trying to clear it of cobwebs and the urge to nap. Mme Cote continues, “Puis, lorsque nous aurons fini l’écoute du critique, vous discuterez son opinion avec votre interlocuteur « mardi ». Est-ce que tout le monde est prêt à commencer ?”

“Oui,” he says in chorus with everyone else, even though he’s definitely not ready to begin-- it feels like he’s never ready to begin in French class, or in literature, or math, or geography.  Science is a little better, because he can _see_ it, the purple-dyed cells scraped from the inside of his cheek just like the ones in the photographs in the textbook.  But even Dr. Kamarajugadda’s enthusiasm and willingness to let them poke at cephalopods with scalpels can’t erase the feeling that all this-- all the classes and desks and multiple choice-- is just a waiting room, a place he has to sit and breathe and endure in between time on the ice.

They’ve started practicing before school, now, he and Tessa. It hurts to wake up so early, arriving at the rink under streetlights still half-dreaming, stumbling out his mum’s van into the sharp spring cold, his skate bag bumping up against his hip.  Tessa is nothing so much as a very small, very sleepy spike of resentment at five in the morning, and she won’t talk to him for the first hour and a half. Won’t even make eye contact with him. He hates everything about early morning practices, except how-- by the time it’s six thirty-- he’s warm and awake and alive and everything feels real, and Tessa’s feet match his exactly, pushing into and out of a turn.  

Their coaches haven’t said anything to them, and neither have their parents, but Scott thinks they might be good.  Better than Danny and his partner, even, and he overheard his aunt and mum once talking about the Olympics and Danny, about how he might be good enough.

Scott isn’t sure if he’s good enough, but he wants to be.  And that means five AM practices in Ilderton and five PM practices in Kitchener-Waterloo, and hours in a desk sandwiched in between.

So when Mme Cote presses play, the tape clicking and hissing from overuse, Scott tries.  He sits up and strains forward, like that will help slow down the flow of, “le film se déroule dans l’Europe du 16ème siècle, bien que cette Europe ressemble plus à un parc à thème qu’à un lieu réel,” into something he can follow.  He doesn’t notice that his knee is still jiggling under the desk until Mme Cote gently presses a hand against his shoulder as she passes by.

“Désolé,” he mutters, and stills.  Holds position, like it’s the start of a routine, and waits for the bell to ring.

-*-

Saturday, he sleeps in until Charlie opens his bedroom door and throws an elbow pad at his head.  “Let’s go, shrimp,” he says. “We’ve got the rink for a shinny, if we hurry. I’m leaving in ten minutes,” he says, and jingles his keyring because he’s an asshole.  Scott pushes himself up on his elbows, trying to blink the sand out of his eyes.

“Who,” he starts, and his voice jumps, because that’s a thing it’s doing now, and it’s only a little humiliating.  Charlie’s probably smirking, so he doesn’t look. Scott clears his throat, tries again. “Who’s coming?” he asks, because if it’s just Charlie’s friends, he’s going to wind up crushed against the boards like a mosquito against a windshield.

“Jackson and a couple of his buddies,” Charlie lists, “Felix, his brother, maybe Aleina, Danny, Kowalski-- I dunno, whoever shows up.”

Scott nods, and shoves his legs over the edge of the bed, sitting up.  If Aleina’s coming, he’s probably not going to wind up dead; she’s Charlie’s age, plays d-line, and is good at getting in Kowalski’s face and making sure he doesn’t check Scott into oblivion.  “Okay,” he says. “I’m in, let me get dressed, eh?” A second elbow pad hits him in the forehead. He scowls.

“You’ve got seven minutes, Scotty,” Charlie says.  “Hurry it up.”

-*-

It sounds stupid and obvious, but hockey is totally different from skating with Tessa.

For one, Tessa doesn’t swear-- her eyes got so wide the first time she heard him say “fuck” that he was sure she would go straight to his mother and demand she wash his mouth out with soap.  She hadn’t, though; she might have been shocked, but Tessa never tattled. Ever. But profanity is pretty much the lingua franca of hockey, and Scott’s learned to speak it like a native.

“Stop fucking cherry picking, Danny,” he yells, because apparently _both_ his brothers are assholes, and Danny keeps loafing around in the back and waiting for a breakaway instead of moving up his lane like he should.  Kowalski tries to pass to Jackson, but Jackson misses, and Scott rushes in, beating Danny to the puck with a jubilant, “HA,” while Aleina yells, “On Scott, on Scott, he’s fuckin’ _fast_ , Felix, c’mon--”

He goes for it, darting around Charlie and Liam-- he has an open shot on goal, yes, faster--

\--and then he trips, catching the front edge of his right blade against the back of his left skate on a crossover step like an idiot, and finds himself hitting the ice, hard, and sliding past the net and into the boards, headfirst with a resounding thud as his helmet makes contact.

“Hold up,” he hears Charlie call from across the ice, and Scott groans, pushing himself to sit up. He’s a little dizzy.  “Felix, goddammit, stop fucking around, I need to check on him,” Charlie says, and skids to a stop in front of him, a spray of ice hitting Scott in the face.

Charlie crouches down, eyes worried behind the shield.  “You alright, shrimp?” He reaches out to take off Scott’s helmet for him, and Scott bats his hand away.  Takes off his own damn helmet, thanks.

“‘m fine,” he says, and realizes he’s tasting iron, making him spit out his mouthguard.  He’s half afraid he’s done something stupid enough to knock a tooth out-- his mum will kill him if he has-- but there’s not enough blood for that, and his tongue assures him that all his teeth are where they’re supposed to be.  It tells him the inside of his bottom lip is split, though. He needs a tissue or something. Doesn’t feel like it needs stitches. “Ugh,” he says, and makes a face, because tasting blood is never going to be something he gets used to.  He spits onto the ice.

“Split lip?” Charlie says, grimacing.

“Yep,” he says, gingerly pulling at the lip so Charlie can see.  “I don’t think it’s too bad-- no stitches, right?” His brothers are pretty good at the Does It Need Stitches game. Maybe one of them should go into medicine.

“I don’t think so,” Charlie agrees, “but you’re going to need to get some ice on that before we go home, or Mum’s going to kill me,” just as Danny skates over-- the rest of the teams are taking a water break-- and asks, “How’s the head, idiot?”

“Fine,” Scott says, because it is.  His helmet’s a good one, and Tessa’s kneed him in the head enough for him to know what a concussion feels like.

“Good,” Danny says, and then gently smacks him upside the head, and then skates over to flirt with Aleina as Scott lets out an offended, “HEY!”

“Toe pick!” Danny calls back over his shoulder, because Danny thinks he’s hilarious, and the rest of the teams crack up.

“Hockey skates don’t _have_ a toe pick, that’s the whole point of that joke, dickhead,” Scott mutters, grabbing onto Charlie’s elbow and pulling himself up.  Charlie looks like he wants to laugh, too, and it’s enough to make Scott want to drop his gloves. “Whatever,” he says, sullen, sliding his mouthguard back in over his teeth and pulling his helmet back down over his head.  “I’m still faster than both of you assholes.”

“You think so?” Charlie says, skating backwards lazily, and maybe Scott shouldn’t have said that, because Charlie’s got at least a foot on him and also he’s been on the track team for the last three seasons. Charlie’s pretty damn fast.

But Scott just shrugs and says, “I was faster than you on the last play,” because it’s true. Aleina offers him a water bottle and a handful of tissues as they reach the bench, saying, “Getting too fast for your own feet, huh, Scotty?” and he flushes, not sure if he loves the game enough to put up with the chirping.

-*-

On the long rides to and from Kitchener-Waterloo after school, he and Tessa usually sleep, faces pressed to the cold windows, or leaning against the enormous pillows his mum kept in the back of van for them.  But today, Tessa has a workbook and pencil in her hand when she climbs into the back with him.

“Homework,” she says and shrugs, her bony little shoulders jumping under her sweatshirt.  She knows he can’t do his homework in the car, and he thinks she feels guilty whenever she brings hers.  He’s tried doing work during their hour-long drive-- it would make everything easier if he could, but reading in the car makes him feel like he’s about to throw up.  “What did you do to your lip?” she asks, eyes curious.

Scott smiles a little, even though it pulls at the stitch-- turns out neither he, Charlie, or Danny should be doctors-- because he’d been waiting for Tessa to notice the swelling during their morning practice, but she’d been so sleepy she never had.  “I was playing hockey on Saturday,” he tells her. “I tripped over my skates and slammed into the boards.” He makes an exploding noise, like a car crash. “It was awesome,” he tells her, and she giggles, and then looks sorry for laughing.

“You’re okay, though?” she asks, and she really does seem worried.  Danny says she’s got a crush on him, which-- Scott doesn’t think that’s true, because what does Danny know about anything? And anyway, she’s just eleven and she’s his skating partner, and it’s his job to make sure she’s okay.

“I’m fine,” he says, and proceeds to tell her about the curved needle the nurse used to put in the stitch, flipping his lip out so she can see it.  

“Ew,” she says, wrinkling her nose, but she looks fascinated. “Did you cry?”

He rolls his eyes.  “No,” he says. “Couldn’t even feel it,” which is true, but he’s leaving out the part where he couldn’t feel it because they’d shot his lip with something that made it go numb and feel like an enormous piece of rubber for the rest of the day.  It’s not as good a story if he includes that part. “What homework do you have?” he asks, tapping at the workbook she’s laid on the seat.

“French,” she says, and makes a face.  He makes one right back. “It’s really hard,” she says, sounding glum, and he’s surprised, because Tessa’s not like him-- she loves school.  She’ll chatter all day about whatever book they’re reading, or the project she’s working on for social studies, or how much she loves her art teacher.  “It doesn’t look anything like it sounds,” she says, and she doesn’t often sound that confused, so he says, “Show me what you’re working on-- maybe I can help?” even though he’s pretty sure he can’t.

But it turns out he’s wrong, because the worksheet she has is easy: just figuring out what question words go in the blank.  He helps her figure out which ones use _où_ and which ones use _quand_ or whatever, coaching her through the pronunciation as best he can.  He tries to ignore the way his stomach lurches as his mum rounds a corner.  Together, they finish the last question as they pull into the rink parking lot.  

“Thanks, Scotty,” Tessa says, and beams at him, and the warm flush he gets at her thanks is totally worth the way his stomach is jumping.

“De rein,” he says, bowing exaggeratedly like they’ve just finished a performance.  “Want to go skate in circles for a while?” he says, handing her skate bag to her as they climb out of the van.

“Oui,” she says, and her accent is perfect.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Every chapter title is a reference to a particular quotation. I will award ten Internet points to anyone who can correctly identify and attribute the quote


	2. A bunch of balls clustered together.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Apparently, the theme of this piece is: "What is something I know nothing about? French? Hockey? Billiards? PERFECT. I shall make it the centerpiece of the story!" 
> 
> So, you know: if this is a ton of bullshit and pool doesn't work like that, I apologize. I've never played in my life. I've just watched a TON of movies with pool hustlers, because I love a good con.
> 
> Also. I fully admit that this comes entirely from a throwaway line I put in _We were never more here_ , and while this whole story isn't intentionally part of that 'verse, this chapter might have the same DNA.

**II. A bunch of balls clustered together.**

“It came with the house,” is what his mother always says to visitors, because she hates it.  And, to be fair, the pool table in the rec room downstairs really does need some sort of justification.  It’s a great table, actually: one inch slate and post legs, and his dad swears the previous owner cried at closing because he had to leave it behind.  But it takes a lot to get past the ugly rust-orange felt, and even Scott will admit that the enormous stained-glass lamp with the Budweiser logo over the table is maybe not the most tasteful of decor.

Scott doesn’t care.  He loves it.

That pool table is maybe his favorite thing in the entire world, except skating, his family, and Tessa staring him down across the ice before they launch into a competition skate, ready to take on the world.  Or maybe the rush of winning, the weight of a medal around his neck, T’s hand in his. Or hockey. Or sex. Or driving with the windows down in summer, singing along to the radio. Dogs with good ears. The sound of crickets in the high grasses of the fields behind his parents’ house. Cold beer.

Whatever, Scott has a lot of favorite things. The point is: he really loves that pool table.

He doesn’t actually remember learning how to play, in the same way that he doesn’t remember learning how to skate.  He’s seen photographs of himself at maybe two or three, clinging like a monkey to an uncle’s back as he bent to make a shot, and he definitely remembers having to drag a chair over to kneel on in order to be able to reach far enough to line the cue up correctly. And even though she hated how ugly it was, his mum would play eight-ball on the table with him in secondary, coaxing him through angles for geometry and momentum for physics when he came home from Canton on breaks and weekends.  Equations and proofs made more sense if he could see them played out in front of him-- and once he could see them, it was easy.

He tries to show Tessa, once, when she’s tearing her hair out over an online geometry class with a terrible instructor: he takes her downstairs and hits shot after shot, trying to show her how the angles and vectors show up in his head, how it was absolutely predictable and clear once you could see the lines on the table.

“I don’t see it,” Tessa finally admits, after she tries a bank shot and misses, badly.  She has a little furrow in between her eyebrows, frustrated in the same way she is when she misses a hold.  “I get how it must work, I do, but I just don’t understand how you can just look at the balls and know where, exactly, to hit them to make them go where you want.”

“It’s like skating,” Scott says, and shrugs.  It makes sense to him. “It’s like the angles on lifts.  Once I can see them in my head, I know what I’m doing and what the edge is.”  He chalks the tip of his cue and gets ready to run the table. “Is that not how it works for you?”

Tessa shakes her head.  “Muscle memory,” she says, and he nods. Makes sense; he’s never met anyone who is so focused on everything their body is doing at any given moment.  She presses a hand against her abdomen, a few fingers above the belly ring she convinced her mum to let her get a few months back and says, “Once I feel it here, I’ve got it.”

“Huh,” he says.  It strikes him as odd that they’re so different in this.  “Well, I guess it’s working for us.”

“So far,” she agrees. “But it’s not helping me with the unit circle, that’s for certain.”

“Nothing can help with the unit circle,” Scott says, darkly, because fuck that SOHCAHTOA shit.  Then, “Four-ball, side pocket,” and takes a shot. It’s textbook, just like he knew it would be, striking off of the eleven and setting up a clear line on five and two.

“Show off,” Tessa says, and she’s not wrong.

-*-

It’s not on purpose, is the thing: he doesn’t set out to, like, emulate Paul Newman or Minnesota Fats or something.  He’s just out with the guys on a Friday, still slightly jetlagged from the flight back from Sweden, and celebrating a silver at Worlds with more beer than is advisable when he hears Liam say, “You should play Scotty, Scotty could beat the shit out of you,” and then he’s being dragged off his barstool to a pool table in the back and there’s money changing hands.

The guy’s maybe thirty, thirty-five, thinning hair spiked with too much gel, and his biceps are the size of Scott’s head.  “So you’re gonna beat the shit out of me?” he asks, looking Scott over, unimpressed. Scott’s pretty sure that explaining that he’s actually kind of a big deal in the world of ice dancing won’t count for much with this guy.

“Uh,” Scott says, because if he were sober, the answer would probably be yes, but currently? Currently he can’t feel his lips and there’s cotton candy between his ears where there’s normally some sort of brain matter.  “I dunno, man,” he finally says. “I’m pretty drunk right now. You want to flip for the break?”

The guy smirks, and pulls out a loonie.  “Call it,” he says, and Scott calls heads.  It lands tails, which pretty much sums up how the first game goes: after the break, he scratches on his second shot-- the house cue is shit and his lines are all blurry-- and Biceps runs the rest of the table with some lucky shots and too much power.

Biceps puts out his hand, after, and Liam hands over a twenty, saying, “What the fuck, Moir?”

Scott takes off his hat, scrubs a hand through his hair.  He hates losing. Hates it more than anything else in the world.  But he’s exhausted and it’s almost one and he should really go sleep it off, which is obviously why he says, “Double or nothing?”

Biceps clearly thinks Scott’s an idiot, and hell, the way Scott played the last game, he might be right.  So he takes the bet-- he even racks and lets Scott break, which is dumb of him, because Scott’s not about to lose two games in a row.

Scott scrubs his face with his hands, trying to wake himself up.  He makes himself walk the table and looks for his lines, watches the shots line up in his head, and nods.  “Eleven-ball in the corner pocket,” he says, taking stripes and starting his run. He gets five shots in before accidentally knocking the three-ball in the side pocket along with the thirteen.

“Shit,” he says, fishing the three back out and resetting it.  “Don’t say I never gave you nothing, eh?” and gestures to the table: it’s pretty as a picture.  But the momentum has shifted, and Biceps fouls out after pocketing the three-ball on the world’s easiest shot.  And after that, it’s easy: a split bank shot puts the nine-ball in the back corner and the twelve in the side on the same hit, and the eight-ball ends it by jumping right into the front right corner pocket, just like he asks it to.

“That’s more like it, Scotty,” Liam says, triumphant and oblivious to the glares from Biceps. He holds out his hand, waiting for his winnings.

Scott’s a little more sober now, so he sees the look Biceps is giving them.  “Hey, man,” he says, holding his hands up in the universal gesture of, _You are significantly larger than I am and I don’t want any trouble_.  “It’s just a friendly game.  No harm, no foul, right?”

Biceps stares him down, and then must decide that his face isn’t punchable enough to be worth the energy.  He pulls out his wallet and digs out Liam’s twenty, plus another, and tosses it on the table. “You better not have been hustling me in that first game, kid,” he says, and Scott assures him that no, no sir, he wouldn’t do that.

“I’m just jetlagged and a little drunk,” he says.  “First game was me being legitimately terrible and you being better,” he adds and it seems to appease his opponent.  It has the added bonus of being entirely true.

Later, as they wait outside the bar for Liam’s girlfriend to pick them up-- neither of them is in a state to drive, and good luck at finding a cab in London at two AM on a Friday that isn’t booked-- Scott says, “I totally  _c_ _ould_ have hustled him,” and if he sounds a little surprised, it’s because the idea has honestly never occurred to him before.  

-*-

It isn’t like he does it often, or anything.

It’s just-- with Tessa out of commission, it’s something to do after skating around with sandbags for hours of empty practice.  It’s something he can win at. He can sit back at the bar and watch the tables, figure out who knows what they’re doing, and who’s fucking around.  Who can afford it, and who can’t. And anyway, it’s not like he ever plays for anything more than beer money. He’s got standards, and it’s not even really about the money.  It’s about the competition.

There are a couple of nights where he has to leave the money on the table and do some pretty fast talking to avoid a fight, but that still doesn’t scare him off.  If anything, he comes out of those nights feeling sharp and awake and alive, adrenaline coursing through him the way it does-- the way it did--

Danny comes out with him one night and watches, about a month and a half after Tessa’s surgery.  Watches him stumble through one game and then another, and then act stunned by his sudden good fortune in the third, shaking his opponent’s hand gratefully after pocketing fifty bucks.

He slides back into the booth, trying not to smirk, and Danny says, “You know this is fucked up, right? Like, this is not how normal people deal with shit.”

He thinks about acting like he has no idea what Danny means, but--

“Yeah,” he agrees, because he knows it’s fucked up.  He’s just not sure what to do about it. He shrugs. “It’s just-- something to do?”

“Jesus,” says Danny.  He downs the rest of his beer, and says, “Jesus, you know if you need something to do, you could call your fucking partner, or visit her or something,” and he’s legitimately angry at him.  “Send her a get-well card, even. It’s not like she’s on the moon.”

Scott feels his hands tighten into fists under the table. Tells them to relax, and says, “She needs her space,” because that’s what she had said in that last text, the one he keeps meaning to delete but can’t bring himself to: _I just need some space to get through this, Scott._ “I’m trying to give her it.  Besides, the phone works two ways.”

Danny rolls his eyes.  “There’s space and there’s _space_ , jackass.”  He slides out of the booth.  “Christ, you two need to get your shit together. It’s embarrassing for the rest of us,” he says, leaving, and Scott stays behind.  Decides he might as well get shitfaced, because he’s got fifty bucks in his pocket and nothing else to do.

Two weeks later, he calls Tessa and asks if she’s up for visitors.  She says yes, and he brings a massive bunch of balloons over to her mum’s house, suggesting that they tie them to her arms to take some of the weight off her legs.

She laughs, and they're not okay-- but they could be, and that's all he's asking for. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, the title comes from a quotation. It's a weird one, this time, so: twenty oh-so-valuable Internet points if you can figure out this one.


	3. I don't have a choice but

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is as close as I will ever come to writing song-fic.
> 
> Also, I didn't have to look up a goddamn thing in this chapter, and I can't tell you what a relief it was.

**III. I don’t have a choice but**

Kate says, “I’m going to go get some water and freshen up.  Scott, honey, can you hold down the fort?” She presses a manicured hand against his shoulder as she stands, a little slow to rise: the hospital chairs are terrible.  It’s been a long morning, and she looks as tired as he feels. The lights in the recovery room are unforgiving.

Scott wants to say no, because this-- waiting for Tessa to wake up-- this feels like a job for an adult, and he doesn’t feel qualified.  He might be twenty-three, but seeing Tessa so small and still after surgery, legs elevated and bandaged, an IV snaking into the back of her hand, her hair caught up in a surgical cap, makes him feel like he’s all of nine.  This is the sort of thing that grown-ups know how to do instinctively, he thinks. He must have been at a competition with Tessa during that lesson.

But he says, “Sure,” and smiles a little, because it’s what she needs him to say, and he’d do a lot more for Mrs. Virtue than just sit by her daughter’s bed and play on his phone while she sleeps. Considering the last time, it’s the least he can do.

“Thanks, hon,” she says, and ruffles his hair.  Picks up her purse, and taps her hand lightly against the mattress next to Tessa’s leg.  “I’ll be right back,” she says, and Scott’s not certain who she’s talking to. “Do you want me to bring you anything?” she asks, and he says, “Coffee?” because it’s going to be a long-ass day, and he’s usually on his second cup by this point.

There’s not much going on in the recovery room at eight thirty in the morning on a Tuesday; something beeps steadily and there’s someone behind the curtain two beds over-- knee replacement, he thinks-- but the other beds are empty.  Once Tessa’s awake, they’ll move her into a private room. Recovery rooms are a little like purgatory: everybody’s just waiting to move on to somewhere else.

He doesn’t like how long it’s taking Tessa to wake up.  He knows anesthesia affects everyone differently, but it feels like an hour has passed since the surgeon called them out of the waiting room to sit with her.  He checks his phone. It’s been less than twenty minutes.

He digs into his pocket, pulls out his earbuds in a tangle of cords.  Plugs them into his phone, and puts his music on shuffle, skipping past anything too aggressive or electronic, because it feels inappropriate in a hospital.  Settles on something with a lone piano, drum kit, and a twang. Building strings and a guitar underneath. Thinks, like he always does, about how he’d put this one out on the ice, the deep edges and rotational lifts tracing themselves across the blank white sheets of Tessa’s bed.  She won’t skate to country, though, and Marina would hate it. So this one just stays in his head, and he tries not to pay too much attention to the lyrics.

The next song to come up is “Starships,” which makes him snort quietly, because the transition’s like shifting from second to fifth without a clutch.

“Wasso funny?” he hears a voice slur from the bed, and he pulls out his earbuds immediately.

“Hey, Tess,” he says, and the fist around his stomach loosens for the first time in two hours.  He scoots his chair closer and leans in, so she doesn’t have to move. “Your mum will be right back.  How’re you feeling?”

She blinks, slow and deliberate, and her eyes are a tiny band of green around enormous pupils.  She looks like a confused, hypothermic lizard. Not that he’s stupid enough to tell her that. “‘M r’lly stoned, I think,” she says, and he laughs.

“No shit, kiddo,” he says, and if there were anyone else around, he’d cringe at how fucking  _f_ _ond_ he sounds.  But Tessa’s never going to remember this, and who’s the guy with the knee going to tell, the orderly?  So he lets himself say, “I’m so fucking glad you’re awake, T,” and tangles his fingers around hers, squeezing gently.

“Mm,” she hums.  “My legs feel like marshmallows, Scotty,” and her eyes drift closed again.

“Alright, T,” he says, feeling the laughter and contentment building in his chest.  “Go back to sleep.”

-*-

He listens to that song a lot, over the next three years.  Sometimes it’s all he can do not to hum it whenever he takes her hand on the ice, because it always seems to be playing in his head when he sees her.  He tries not to think about it.

It’s not as weird as it sounds.  He doesn’t make fucking mixtapes, or anything, but he has mental playlists for almost everyone he knows.  Charlie is mostly Zeppelin and Pearl Jam and Clapton, a little bit of Kanye, and some of the Beatles’ later stuff. His mum is Martina McBride and the Ronettes, and Danny is pretty exclusively Radiohead.  (Really, Danny is just “Creep” on repeat for three hours, depending on how Scott’s feeling at the moment.) His dad is Hank Williams and John Denver and, weirdly, Maria Callas. Scott has always figured his personal playlist is basically just the soundtrack to _Space Jam_ , and he’s fine with that.

“So what’s on mine?” Chiddy asks one night, the summer after Sochi, when Scott makes the mistake of trying to explain how his mental playlists work.  They’re on tour, and it’s a night off. Someone suggested karaoke, and while Scott is always down for that, they’ve somehow just wound up in Jeffrey’s hotel room, crashed out on the floor, drinking tiny bottles of terrible vodka that someone stole from one of the million of receptions they’ve gone to in the past few weeks.  Scott’s mixed his with a can of lukewarm vanilla Coke; it’s fucking foul.

He considers Chiddy for a moment, and then says, “Bobby Darin, Boyz II Men, and Joan Baez.”  Chiddy pulls a face, like, _What the hell?_ and Scott concedes, “There might be a little Dre and Jay-Z on there, too, I dunno, I haven’t really thought about it.”

Chiddy shakes his head, and says, “You’re insane, Moir,” but Meagan says, “I dunno, it makes sense to me, the Bobby Darin stuff works.”  Tessa's on the floor in front of her armchair, and she’s doing some sort of complicated braid thing to T’s hair, keeps undoing and redoing it.  Tessa’s eyelids are heavy, and she’s leaning back into Meagan’s hands like she’s about half an hour from curling up where she is, like a cat.

Jeffrey warbles a couple of lines from “It Ain’t Me, Babe,” his feet dangling off his bed by Scott’s face, then says, “Yeah, no, I get the Joan Baez, Scott.  You should be flattered, Chan.”

Scott raises his glass in vindication: see?

Chiddy doesn’t look convinced, but Kaitlyn says, “What about me, Scott?  What’s on mine?”

Scott groans.  “See, this is why I don’t talk about this. It turns into, like, a terrible party trick.”  Jeffrey shoves his foot in his face, saying, “The lady asked you a question, Moir,” and Tessa giggles.  Scott shoves Jeff’s foot to the side, and says, “Okay, jesus, Buttle.” He turns and considers Kaitlyn, who’s propped up beside Tess.  Andrew’s gone on an ice run, and so it’s like he’s only seeing the bright part of a double exposure.

“You’re, like, eighty percent early Britney Spears. Pre-breakdown,” he tells her, and she nods, like this is a very serious assessment, and not a bunch of alcohol-driven bullshit.  “And the other twenty percent is a mix of The Clash and Julie Andrews,” because why the hell not. It makes her laugh.

“I’ll take it,” she says, satisfied, and then asks, “What’s Andrew?” Kaitlyn leans forwards, way too invested in the answer.

He takes a swig of his vodka and Coke.  “Well,” he says slowly, “he _wants_ to be Hendrix--”

“But?” says Chiddy, prompting, because no one really ever seems to understand how evil he is.

“But he’s really just, like, an endless playlist Rick Astley singing ‘Never Gonna Give You Up.’”  Buttle fucking _howls_ , and Chiddy says, “I accept my playlist if that’s the alternative, christ.”  

Kaitlyn’s got the hiccups, and Tessa’s laughing so hard she might be crying.  Scott gives himself a mental pat on the back for a job well done, which is why he’s so taken aback when T chokes out, “What about me, Scotty?” in between giggle fits.

 _Shit_ , he thinks, as Tessa looks on expectantly, because there’s definitely a mental playlist for Tessa, and he’s not comfortable sharing any of it in mixed company.  Or any company, frankly. Christ, he doesn’t like thinking too hard about it himself. It’s just a list of _this is a Tessa song_ , or _I can see Tessa skating to this_ , or-- something.  He doesn’t question it.

“Um,” he says, trying to stall for time.  Thinks, _What’s a Tessa song that won’t get me in trouble?_ , grabs one at random, thinks, _Not_ that  _one, Moir_ , and then blurts out, “Sometimes I think it’s just all of Tchaikovsky's ‘Sleeping Beauty,’ especially during morning practices.” That sounds convincing and vaguely complimentary, right?

Kaitlyn looks like she wants to disagree, but then Meagan hums the first few bars to the waltz, and Weaver’s face melts into utter delight, which-- shit, that’s probably not good. Chiddy’s giving him eyebrows, and he knows better than to engage.  He takes a long swig from his drink to avoid eye contact.

“I do like that movie,” Tessa says, but she sounds uncertain, like she knows he’s lying but can’t figure out why.

“So, _Scotty_ \--” says Buttle, rolling onto his side and staring Scott down like he’s a magnifying glass and Scott’s a particularly flammable ant.  He’s only saved from whatever line of questioning is next by Andrew knocking on the door, loudly proclaiming, “The iceman cometh!”

“Well, don’t do it in the _hallway_ , that’s disgusting,” Kaitlyn calls back, and that-- that’s it, christ, they’re all so fucking _done_.

-*-

It’s several weeks later, and he’s helping her get her luggage off the carousel at the London airport when she says, “My playlist isn’t really just Tchaikovsky, is it?”

He’s caught off-guard, distracted by the sea of black wheelie suitcases, and says, “No,” before his brain can catch up.  Sighs. “It’s not just Tchaikovsky.”

She gives him an expectant look, then says, “Well, do I get to know what else is on it?”

He hesitates, and then says, “I dunno, T, maybe someday?” because it’s just a little too close to the bone right now, and they’re teetering on the edge of retirement and he’s terrified about what’s coming next.  He smiles a little, but Tessa looks hurt, and he doesn’t want--

He sets down her bag, and reaches out for her hand.  “Hey, T, no,” he says, “It’s not like that. I just want to get it right,” because that’s not a lie, not at all, and maybe she hears it, because she takes his hand.  Tangles their fingers together.

“Let me know when you do?” she asks, and he says, “When I figure it out, you’ll be the first one to know.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quote on this one is pretty damn easy, if you pay attention to the context. Only five Internet points in play on this one.


	4. Firmly beneath the ribcage.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So time is an artificial construct, and what is reality anyway?
> 
> By which I mean: I know the timeline in this is all kinds of effed up, and I do not care, because I will write whatever I need to in order to put Scott Moir into glasses.

**IV. Firmly beneath the ribcage.**

At first he thinks it’s just because he’s spent too many hours trying to figure out how to set up the formulas he needs in Excel-- and everyone knows technology hates him.  It seems obvious to him that the reason someone is inexpertly foxtrotting across his optic nerve is because he’s decided to take a stab at the whole settled adult thing, and that means he has to help figure out tax schedules and payroll and inventory for the shop, and suddenly there’s a lot more math and laptops involved in his life than he thought there would be when he was fifteen.

It’s not _bad_ , it really isn’t.  Well. The headaches are awful, but everything else is fine.  It’s just different from what he imagined. Although, to be fair, his post-competitive imaginings-- the ones where he transitioned seamlessly into a SWAT team or fire chief or Optimus Prime or something-- were always a bit hazy, and possibly over-influenced by action movies.  It turns out his post-competitive reality is a little more about weekly business meetings and time manning the shop and weekend flights to Winnipeg to try to prop up a relationship that feels increasingly like it’s circling the drain, with weeks of insane tour schedules shoehorned in wherever he and Tess can make them fit.

Pressing a thumb hard against the pulse between his eyebrows, Scott wishes they could fit in a few more.

He dry swallows a couple ibuprofens, and reminds himself that it isn’t forever.  He’ll finish inventory before lunch, and there’s a tour coming up in two weeks-- China.  It’s going to be grueling and fast and a hot mess and he can’t wait; it feels like Christmas morning, just peeking around the corner. _And_ he’s meeting T for practice in three hours.  He can do anything for three hours, he decides.  Or two weeks. He rubs his eyes, ducks his head, and goes back to do battle with his spreadsheet, grim and focused.

Tessa picks up on his headache immediately when he shows up at the rink, but she tries to give him some space to work through it: hands him a bottle of water, talks lightly about her brother’s recent disaster of a job interview.  He laces up silently, offers her his hand when he joins her on the ice, and says, “Sounds good,” when she suggests they focus on modifying a couple of elements that used to work in competition, but play too close to the boards for tour. He’s not trying to be short with her, but he feels like he’s about a beat and a half behind her jokes and her feet the whole time, and his head hurts so badly after a combination spin that he thinks he might vomit.

He pushes through for as long he can, but after an hour he has to say, “I need a break, T,” and she nods, and follows him over to the boards and silently hands him his guards.

She sits next to him on the bench.  “Headache?” she asks, quietly, even though she obviously already knows.

“Yeah,” he says, and lets his head tilt back to the wall, closing his eyes.  “Again. Sorry, I know we’ve got shit to do.”

He feels her hand snake over top of his, cold fingers curling into his palm.  “We’ve got two weeks,” she says, like that’s all the time in the world, and then reassures him, “We’ve done more with less.”  She gives his hand a squeeze, and then releases, standing up. He opens his eyes a sliver. Tessa’s got her hands on her hips, lips pursed like she’s considering a problem-- which she is, because she’s looking at him.

“Do you think you’re still up for going over the SOI stuff tonight? Or could we do that tomorrow, when you’re feeling better?” she asks, and he groans, because shit, he forgot that they’ve got to have their contracts and insurance stuff in by the end of the week, and it’s like an hour’s worth of filling out forms and signing stuff.  He should get a scheduling app or something, probably.

“I can’t tomorrow,” he tells her, because Kaitlyn’s coming into town in the afternoon and he won’t get a chance to see her again until after China.  He knows better than to try to double book.

Tessa nods; he can’t remember if he told her about Kait’s visit this time or not, but she doesn’t question him.  “I was going to say we could fill everything out over dinner after practice,” she says, and reaches out, thumb brushing lightly over his temple, and he wants to lean in to her palm and let her take the weight, “but how about we just call it early today, and I go grab some sandwiches or something, and meet you back at your place? We can do everything there, instead.  You look about done in.”

“You’re the best, T,” he tells her, means it, and she says, “Don’t you forget it,” and offers her hand to help him up.  “Go home, Scotty,” she tells him with a pat to his shoulder. “I’ll be there in a minute.”

-*-

He’s sprawled on the couch with the lights off when she knocks, a pillow over his face to block out the light.  “‘S open,” he calls, because he’s a terrible host and his head hurts and also his couch is the most comfortable thing in the world, and he’s never ever leaving it. At least not tonight.

“I’m telling your mum you leave your front door unlocked,” Tessa says from the doorway.  He hears her toe her shoes off and then pad through the living room in her socks, something plastic rustling as she walks.  “What if I had been a murderer?”

“You probably wouldn’t knock,” he points out.  She’s pulling plates out of the cabinet, and he spares a thought for the half-empty bowl of cereal in the sink and the recycling bin he hasn’t taken out in more than a week.  Eh. Tessa’s used to it. He needs to take care of it before Kaitlyn gets in tomorrow, though. “There’s beer in the fridge if you want it,” he says.

“Thanks,” she calls back.  “Water for you?”

“Yeah,” he says, glum, because it’s what he needs but not what he wants.  Story of his damn life.

“Stop acting like it’s the end of the world,” she says, her voice getting closer.  She sets two plates down on the coffee table, and he hears her drag two coasters over before setting down their drinks.  “It’s a headache, you need water. No beer,” she says, and then, tapping lightly at his pillow, “Scooch up.”

He curls towards his legs, holding his pillow in place over his face like it’s some new pilates move, and lets her sit down before relaxing his head into her lap.  “Could be a brain tumor,” he says, and she pulls the pillow off his face. He starts to object, but she lays a hand over his eyelids, blocking the light, and starts to rub lightly at his temples.

“It’s not a brain tumor,” she says, certain.  He has a feeling that even if it were a brain tumor, it would stop being one immediately because Tessa dismisses the possibility so completely.  “It’s eye strain. You keep squinting at everything.”

“I don’t want glasses,” he says, feeling petulant because he knows she’s right, and also because it feels like a weird line: he used to be an Olympic athlete, and now he’s the guy who needs glasses because he stares at spreadsheets all day.

Her hands stop rubbing, and he pries an eye open, reluctant.  “Do you want the headaches?” she asks, looking down at him, the late afternoon sun from the window splashing across the curve of her cheek, outlining the flyaway strands of her hair in a halo.  She raises an eyebrow and he mutters, “No,” because no one wants headaches. His headaches don’t want headaches.

“Well,” she says, “then you probably need glasses,” gentle, and he really can’t argue with that.

He hums in concession, eyes closing again, then says, “Yeah, but girls don’t make passes at boys who wear glasses,” and she tugs a little at his hair in mock disapproval.  

“I’m sure Kaitlyn will think you’re even more devastatingly handsome in glasses,” she says, prim, and he’s pretty sure she’s joking so he says, “Pfft, no one looks better in glasses,” because he hadn’t actually been thinking about what Kait might think, and that isn’t good.

“Are you saying _my_ glasses aren’t cute?” Tessa says, and she sounds like she’s trying to be annoyed, but her hands say otherwise.

“Your glasses are totally cute,” he says dutifully.  And then, because he can’t help it, “For a nerd.” She flicks him in the earlobe, and yeah, he deserved that, but _ow_.  “Hey,” he says, rubbing at his ear.  “I’m serious, though,” he says. “Your glasses are cute, because you’re a nerd and always reading and they make sense for you.  Me, though,” he says, and pretends to knock his head with a knuckle, and makes an empty clucking noise with his tongue at the same time: blockhead.  “If I’m wearing glasses, it’s just because I’m getting fucking old.”

She wraps a hand around his, pulling it away from his temple.  “I wish you wouldn’t say that about yourself,” she says, and her voice is low and intense.  “You’re the smartest person I know.” He snorts, because that’s such bullshit, but she says, “You _are_ ,” insistent.

“Tess--” he starts, but she cuts him off, putting two fingers of her other hand lightly, shockingly across his mouth, and his eyes blink open.  “No,” she says, and the light from the window is catching her in a band across her eyes, gold and green, daring him to look anywhere else. “Listen, okay? You’re _brilliant_.  You know exactly what I mean, no matter how badly I explain it, and you always understand how I’m feeling, even when I don’t. You know when I need to figure things out on my own, and you don’t expect me to do things the same way you do.  And I don’t know anyone who works as hard as you, okay? So you-- you need to stop acting like you’re some kind of idiot, because you’re _not_.”

She’s leaning over him, fierce, and for a moment he thinks-- he doesn’t know what he thinks, he doesn’t know if he can.  He feels pinned by her fingers on his mouth and tastes the ghost of copper, and-- then she blinks, and her fingers lift by a millimeter, hovering.  She looks embarrassed by her outburst, so he clears his throat. Says, “Thanks, Tess,” soft, and doesn’t entirely recognize his voice.

“You’re welcome,” she says, oddly formal, and then, “I got you turkey, I hope that’s okay,” and he laughs, a little unhinged, because this is how the two of them walk away from potential disaster: sandwiches.

“Turkey’s fine,” he says, and moves to sit up, because that seems the safer option.

-*-

It’s a thirteen hour flight from Detroit to Beijing, non-stop, and that means they have rules.  

The first rule is that, if at all possible, he gets an aisle seat, because otherwise he’ll be climbing over her a million times whenever he needs to get up to pee or walk the aisles and stretch or whatever, and she doesn’t appreciate that.  The second rule is that Tessa’s only allowed to watch one in-flight movie, and she can only watch it once; there was a flight to Germany before Vancouver where she spent the whole flight watching _Mean Girls_ on repeat, and the following twenty-four hours were some of the only times Scott can remember wishing he had a different partner.  And the third rule is that, after Tessa watches her one and only movie, the armrest between them comes up, and it’s time to sleep.

There’s a fourth rule about this, but it’s not flight-specific.  They established a general sleep-amnesty policy about five years into their partnership which has served them well over the years: basically, the rule states that sleep is of paramount importance, and so long as one person isn’t preventing the other from falling asleep, no action can be taken against the sleeper unless it’s an emergency.  This means Tessa isn’t allowed to wake him up if she’s bored, and he can’t steal her pillow, even if she doesn’t look like she’s using it, which-- chances are she’s using his shoulder instead. He doesn’t know how many times he’s woken up with her face smushed into his shoulder, his t-shirt slightly damp from her half-open mouth.

They’re somewhere over the Northwest Territories when the cabin lights go down, and he asks, “So, what movie are we watching?” because if they don’t watch the same thing, he gets distracted by whatever’s happening on her screen.

“Well,” she says, and scrolls through the options, “There’s _The Revenant_ ,” and he shakes his head, because sure, he’d like to watch DiCaprio fight a bear, but she hates movies like that.  “Um, _Gone Girl,_ _Lego Movie_ , _Bridge of Spies_ ,” and she’s clearly looking for something she thinks he’ll like.

He taps the screen, takes a look at what's offered, and says, “You sure you don’t want to watch _Sense and Sensibility_?”

She looks at him like he’s lost his mind.  “Are you sure you do?”

He shrugs.  He really doesn’t mind Jane Austen; she’s pretty sharp.  What he minds is how every time T watches _Pride and Prejudice_ she starts looking at him like she wants to see him in a cravat, and it’s never going to happen.  He always feels like he’s going to choke when he has to wear a bow tie, and he’s pretty sure he’d have an honest-to-god meltdown if he has to skate wearing a cravat.  “It’s got House in it,” he says. “And Kate Winslet. She’s pretty okay, I guess.”

Tessa rolls her eyes.  “Pretty okay, you _guess_ ,” she says, like she’s offended on Ms. Winslet’s behalf.  “Well, fine, then. _Sense and Sensibility_ it is.  Pull it up on yours, too,” she says, digging out her ear buds, “and we’ll start it at the same time, okay?”

“Yeah,” he says, and grabs his bag from under his seat.  He pulls out his headphones, and then-- rolling his eyes at himself for hesitating, _get the fuck over yourself, Moir_ \-- grabs his glasses case.

“Oh,” Tess says when she see what he has in his hands, “You got them!” and she sounds more excited about his glasses than he’s heard her in ages.  “Put them on, put them on, I want to see,” she says, and he sighs, all _well if you insist_ , before sliding them on.

“Ta-da,” he says, dryly, giving her the most sarcastic jazz hands possible.  “From Superman to Clark Kent in a single bound.”

“Shut up,” she says, and shoves at his shoulder.  “I love them, you look awesome. What did Kait think?”

“Um,” he says, and shrugs.  “I didn’t get them until after she left?”  Based on the strained way they left things, he wasn’t sure Kaitlyn would want to see them anyway.

Tessa looks like she wants to say something, and then thinks better of it.  “So you picked them out yourself, then?” she says instead. She brings a finger up to the corner of one the frames, pushing them up his nose a tiny bit.

“Yep,” he says.  “Told ‘em to give me the nerdiest glasses they could find.  Now we match,” he tells her, and she says, “Shut up, fellow nerd,” and plugs in her earbuds.  She hesitates for a moment, and then, gesturing to the armrest between them, says, “Do you mind if I--?”

He pushes it back, and she settles down along his side.  “Ready?” he asks, and she nods.

They push play together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The quotation game continues. This one might be a toughy, so: twenty Internet points to the first person to figure it out. And yeah, the quotation spells 'ribcage' as one word.
> 
> And: please accept my apologies for the late post on this chapter. I got distracted by a day trip to go see art, yesterday, and came home fully intending to stay up As Long As It Took to finish writing the chapter, and-- then it took a left turn I wasn't anticipating, so I had to rewrite everything? And there was much frustration. But it's all better now.
> 
> But just so you know, if I'm ever late on a chapter and you're like, "What is UP with this IRRESPONSIBLE AUTHOR," I live over on Tumblr under the same name, and sometimes I post heads-ups if I'm gonna be late. So at least you'll know I'm not dead.


	5. No breath without that

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Please understand, this chapter nearly killed me. I blame Prince. And also Sam Chouinard's videos of Tessa and Scott dancing hip hop.

**V. No breath without that**

It’s July, and the upstairs studio feels dense and sticky, even though Sam’s got a box fan set up in the open window.  “The heat is appropriate, yes?” Sam says when Tessa pulls up the hem of her t-shirt to wipe sweat out of her eyes. “Prince would approve.”

Scott grimaces, and takes a drink from his water bottle.  “I dunno,” he tells Sam. “He definitely wouldn’t approve of whatever the hell I was doing that time.” It’s their second day working out their short dance choreography, and it’s both a hell of a lot of fun and confusing as fuck.  Fun, because he loves watching the way ideas flow through the shape of their bodies in the mirror, Sam helping them find the angle to the story. It’s confusing as fuck, though, because there’s a lot of _and the straight line lift goes here_ or _and then we go into midnight blues and things happen_ , but they haven’t worked out those elements yet, so Scott can’t see the whole thing in his head and that always bugs him.  He trusts the process, knows it works-- but that doesn’t make him any less impatient to get the whole damn thing out on the ice.

“I liked it,” Tessa says, digging for something in her gym bag on the back table, and he gives her a look in the mirror, because there’s loyalty and then there’s bullshitting, and sometimes T doesn’t seem to know the difference.  “I did!” she says, turning around and catching his skepticism. “It felt honest.” She pulls her hair out of her ponytail, runs her hands through it twice, and then twists it up into a knot at the top of her head in a move he’d swear is just inborn in all women. He’s briefly jealous, actually, because his hair is getting stupidly long and he’s about ready to shave his head, he’s so hot right now.  

“You mean improvised,” he argues, because he was definitely making shit up there at the end.  “Totally forgot the bit after _don’t need experience_. Sam, can I see it again?”

“Of course,” Sam says, shaking out his hands like there’s too much energy in them.  “But pousse mais pousse égal, yeah? A little improvisation is okay for now. We’re looking for the outline of things, and maybe not everything will work in the end.”  He cues up the music on his laptop. “Watch first, yeah? Then we’ll go again.”

Scott moves so he can see what Sam does, Tessa leaning against the table in the mirror, and she’s counting off _one two three four,_ ex- _per_ \- i- ence, and Sam’s arms go out, fingers up like he’s trying to shush Tessa, side and side, hands up, lean into the hip.  He hits each position like it’s locking into place.

“Yeah,” Scott nods, because that makes more sense than what he was doing before.  He tries the lean into the turn on _leave it all up to me_ as Sam goes to back the music up again, because the next bit is maybe going to have twizzles, and they haven’t got that far yet. “Okay, yeah, I see,” he says, after he gets a sense of the approach, a little more confident.  “Let’s go.” Tess comes up to the mirror to join him, and he watches a breath roll through her, her shoulders loosening. Her eyes meet his in the mirror, and she smirks: game on.

He still feels like he’s not sharp enough on the punctuation, but Sam waves him off when he wants to run it through for the umpteenth time at the end of the hour.  “It’s not ballet,” he says, blunt. “You need to move honest, for this, and you don’t move like Tessa,” and he does a little slide with his feet, hands low, like he’s showing the difference.  “That’s good, man. There has to be a space, you know? Sharp and loose, the difference is good.” Sam grins a little, packing up his laptop, like he’s about to say something he shouldn’t. “I like the back-and-forth.  I mean,” he says, shrugging, “it’s Prince. There’s only so much choreography one can do for sex.”

Scott laughs at that, because yeah: _true_ , and hears Tessa start coughing behind him.  “You okay, T?” he says, and she’s wiping her chin with the back of her hand from where she’s choked on her water.

“‘M fine,” she says, dignified.  She’s got it all down the front of her.  Pulls at her shirt, winces, and then digs through her bag until she finds a dry one.  “Just glad we’re not doing ‘Darling Nikki,’ like you wanted,” she says, her voice muffled as she changes shirts, and she’s wearing a sports bra and he sees her in less on a regular basis, but he still has to look away, because-- fuck, she hurts to look at, sometimes.

Sam raises his eyebrows.  “I did not know that was on the table,” he says, and Scott’s pretty sure he doesn’t just mean the song.

“I was joking,” he says, because he obviously was. Mostly. It would never be allowed, anyway: too much pearl-clutching.  Plus he’d melt right through the rink in embarrassment, because the only choreography he could imagine wasn’t choreography, per se.  Sam gives him a look, like: _you are fooling no one, son_ , and Scott clears his throat.  “Ready, T?” he asks, getting out his keys.  He needs something to do with his hands.

“Yeah, coming,” she says, and slings her bag over her shoulder, holding her sunglasses.  Stops and gives Sam a peck on the cheek as they head out the door, and says, “On se voit demain,” with a wave, and they head down the stairs.

“Well?” she says, her hand skimming along the rail as she skips down to the ground floor.  She looks like she could take another hour of dance without a problem; he feels like he’s swimming through molasses.

“Well, what?” he asks, holding the door open as they go out to the parking lot.  It feels cooler outside than it did in the studio, but that’s probably only because of the open space.  If he stands still, he can feel the warmth radiating up from the asphalt.

“Well, do you think it’ll work?” she asks, sliding her sunglasses on.  “It’s a little different for us.”

“Yeah, but a good different,” he says, because it is.  “I’ve just got to kick it up a notch to match you on the movements.  I’ll get there.” He pops the trunk, and they stash their bags in the back before he opens her door.  She’s looking at him, forehead furrowed. “What?”

“I _like_ the way you’re moving,” she says, and she’s flushed and sweaty behind her glasses.  “Don’t change it,” and she rests a hand on his forearm as she slides into the car and, shit. He wants to pull her back up, wants to press her up against the side of the car, metal hot against her back, and find out if the inside of her mouth is as warm as he thinks it must be.  He stays still, and her fingers trail off. “Scott?” she asks, and-- yeah, yes, he’s still just standing there, holding her door open like an idiot.

“Sorry,” he says.  Shuts her door gently, and tries to get himself under control before he gets in the driver’s side.  “Heat’s frying my brain today, I swear,” he says, not looking at her, and cranks the A/C as high as it will go.

“No kidding,” Tessa says, and she holds her shirt up to catch the cooler air from the vent as he puts the car in reverse, his right hand on the back of her headrest.  Her neck is right there. “I think I’m going to take a cold shower when I get home.”

“Yeah,” Scott says, and resolutely checks his blind spots before backing out.  “Me, too.”

-*-

The attraction isn’t new, not for either of them.  It’s like they’re radios, tuned into a very specific frequency, and sometimes the signal is stronger than others, like they’re driving through the mountains and shit gets in the way.  He could pick her up pretty clearly the summer she was seventeen, and again, the year before Sochi. There have been occasional burst of static since then, but it’s all in passing. Scott, however-- he’s pretty sure he’s been broadcasting loudly enough to be heard in New Zealand, lately.

Tessa’s been kind enough to ignore it, and he can’t decide if he’s grateful or fucking mortified.

“You want to do two loops today?” he asks her, not expecting much in the way of a response, given the early hour.  Tessa nods, focused on stretching out her hip flexor. It gives her trouble sometimes. He’s joked about how they both have to spend as much time stretching and cooling down as they do actually training, now that they’re both ancient and almost thirty.  She doesn’t find it that funny.

“Yeah,” she says.  Yawns a little. He’s not sure how she manages the metro when she’s still half-asleep, but she hasn’t missed a run yet.  “Got to start building up some endurance.”

“Sounds good,” he tells her. “You alright with upping the pace like we talked about?”

“Mmhm,” she agrees, and puts in her earbuds, and he does the same.  They both prefer to listen to music while running, and it’s not like they need to talk to understand each other, anyway.  He presses play, says, “Ready?” and she nods, and off they go.

It’s about three quarters of the way through the second loop that he knows she’s really awake-- she taps his arm to point out a fat, champagne-colored squirrel sitting frozen a tree branch, and she mimics its puzzled look, cheeks puffed out and hands curled like claws, and it’s so perfectly accurate that he almost trips.  

She takes advantage of his misstep to pull ahead, then turns and jogs backwards for a moment.  “Race you back?” he can see her say, and he says, “You’re on, Virtch,” and takes off for the lamp post where they started.  It’s closer than it should be, really, because she puts on a final burst of speed he wasn’t expecting as they barrel around the last corner, and he turns to run part of the way up the embankment to avoid her lunge.

“Ha,” he says, breathless.  Pulls out his earbuds and flops down on the wet grass, Carly Rae sounding tinny in the slowly warming air, legs out in front of him, his weight resting on his arms.  “Winner and still champion.”

“I hate you,” she says, and sits next to him, leaning up against his right arm.  She’s radiating heat, shoulders heaving with effort.

“You love me,” he corrects her, absent, and she says, “Yeah, I do,” and they watch as a mallard lands on the pond, a flurry of feathers and noise as the sun starts to edge above the trees.  Scott ducks his head, pulse thundering in his ears. He allows himself a dry kiss to her shoulder, and stands.

“C’mon,” he says, offering her a hand up.  “I’ll buy you breakfast.”

So: no, the attraction isn’t new.  Everything else feels like it is, though.

-*-

It’s the sort of thing he knows he needs to talk about with someone, because when he doesn’t talk about shit like this, he winds up drunk, or hustling pool, or waking up in beds that he doesn’t belong in.  And what was maybe excusable when he was nineteen and twenty and twenty-three really isn’t anymore. So he calls their therapist and sets up an individual appointment for later in the week, and then he calls Danny.

“I’m an idiot, and I need you not to judge me,” he says when Danny picks up.

“No promises,” Danny says, and it sounds like he’s got Scott on speaker.  “But I’m just going to suggest right off the bat that you buy her flowers and grovel.”

It’s not a bad suggestion, actually.  “Am I on speaker?” Scott asks, because he really doesn’t need this to be overheard by his sister-in-law or, like, one of Danny’s twelve-year-old students.

“Yeah,” Danny says. “I’m driving home, no one else is in the car.  What’s up?”

Scott is silent for a moment.  Thinks about how expensive international calls are, and gets over himself.  “Pretty sure I’m in love with Tessa,” he says, and-- there. It wasn’t as hard to say as he thought it would be.  Felt pretty good, actually.

“Do-- I’m sorry,” Danny says, “Do you want me to be surprised by this?”  He sounds like he’s laughing, the fucker. “Because, Scotty, like: I _know_. Since, like, grade ten or some shit.”

“Well, I didn’t,” he says, a little sharp.  “Not like that, anyway.”

“Sorry,” Danny says, and then, “Are you alright?” because he and Danny might butt heads sometimes, but they got each other.

“I think so,” he says.  Walks over to the fridge and pulls out a beer-- light, which is the worst part about training again.  “Don’t know what the fuck I’m going to do about it, but I’m okay,” and that sounds surprisingly true. Feels true.  Why would he be upset about loving Tess? It’s probably the smartest thing he’s ever done, except for how they’re trying for the Olympics again.

Fuck.

“Well,” says Danny, “you’ve basically got two choices.”  Scott hums: go on? “Choice number one is to do nothing, and choice number two is to do something,” and Scott waits for him to continue, but he doesn’t.  It’s like Danny thinks he’s fucking Yoda.

“Thanks,” Scott says, dry. “That was incredibly helpful.”

“I don’t know what you want me to say,” Danny says.  “I mean, I think you’re pretty safe if you do something, because Tessa’s crazy about you--”

“You’re full of shit,” he says, because how would his brother know that? He’s in fucking Denmark; Scott’s around Tessa almost all day, every day, and _he_ can’t tell how Tessa feels about him.  He knows she loves him, but it’s the _how_ that’s driving him insane.

“Fact,” Danny says, mild, and then, “But if you guys are really serious about Korea--”

“Yeah,” Scott says, and that’s what he’s worried about.  He wants Korea, in part because the competitor in him wants it, always wants it, wants to win, but also because she’s so certain they can do it this time.  He couldn’t live with himself if he made it harder for them to get there. “Yeah, we really want it.”

Danny goes quiet, then says, “I don’t know, Scotty.  But I wouldn’t keep secrets. Not from Tessa, you know?”

“Yeah,” Scott says, and that’s really all there is to say.

-*-

He thinks about how to tell her, all the time.  At her place over dinner? At his? No, there are bedrooms there, and he doesn’t want her to think--

Anyway.  No. Maybe a coffee shop?  Too public; he doesn’t want an audience.  At the park, some morning, before there are many people around?  But she likes the park, and he doesn’t want to ruin it for her if it goes badly.

He’s a disaster at practice the next week: miscounts his twizzles, holds the lifts too long, misses the entrance to the no-touch step sequence so many times he wants to beat his head against the boards.  His hands feel too big and clumsy at Tessa’s waist. Marie-France, who he has never heard swear in his life, tells him to get his head out of his ass and focus. He tries, with mixed results.

Tessa’s quiet on their walk back to his car after practice on Thursday.  She says, “Thanks,” soft, when he opens her door, and doesn’t look at him.

He gets in, frustrated with himself.  “Fuck,” he says after he shuts the door.  Stares at the steering wheel.  Scrubs at his face with his hands, and then apologizes.  “I’m sorry I’m such a mess right now, T,” he says.

“Is it something I did?” she says, and he nearly breaks his neck with how fast he turns towards her.  She’s chewing at her lip the way she sometimes does when they’re waiting for the judges’ scores in the Kiss and Cry.

“What?” he says, shaking his head.  “No, Tessa, this is all me--”

“You haven’t looked at me since we went running last week,” she says, like she didn’t hear him, “and I’m sorry if I weirded you out--”

“I love you,” he says, desperate, his throat tightening.  Fuck. Her eyes are as big as he’s ever seen them.  “I’m in love with you. I’m sorry, I know it’s awful timing, I can’t help it,” he says.  Babbles, really. “But I don’t want to lie to you,” and then her hands, still cold from the rink, cup his jaw.  Pull him close.

“Then don’t,” she says, and her mouth is warmer than all of summer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heads up, y'all: rating will increase in the final chapter, which means I'm going to lock this to members only when I post. Tessa Virtue, I would strongly suggest that you stop reading here, girl.
> 
> And the quote game continues! I will be SUPER impressed if you get this one. It is therefore worth twenty-FIVE Internet points, ooooh.


	6. Vice versa

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry about the wait, but I'm not sorry about anything else.
> 
> Tessa, this is your last warning: go watch fanvids or something for a while, okay?

**+1. Vice versa.**

“Do you want to come up?” she asks, eyes looking anywhere but at him, and he thinks about it, god.  Thinks about how they probably wouldn’t make it past her couch, maybe not even that far. There’s a mark at the base of her neck, and he knows what it tastes like.

He groans.  Makes himself grasp the ten and two of the steering wheel instead of her, and lets his forehead hit the back of his hands.  “Yeah,” he admits. “I want to. A lot.” He’s not proud; he wants to come up to her apartment with her in the same way he wants drive too fast around curves at night with the windows down, blaring music, because it would feel really damn good.  “But we should--” _talk about it first_ , he’s going to say, he is, and she rests her hand in between his shoulder blades like she’s trying to soothe him.  He shudders.

He’s going to get all his wires crossed with this woman, jesus.

“Okay,” Tess says, and he feels her let out a controlled breath that tickles the back of his neck.  “Okay, yes,” she says, “you’re right,” even though he didn’t finish his sentence. She understands what he’s worried about, though, because she asks, “Do you want it to just be us, or do you want to make an appointment with Dorothy?” and while part of him thinks they should be able to figure it out on their own, this is too important.

He says as much.  Says, “I don’t think I could handle it if I fuck this up, T,” and feels her rest her head against his shoulder.

“It wouldn’t just be you,” she says, and the heat of her mouth burns through the cotton of his sleeve.  “I’m in it, too.” He sits back up, wraps an arm around her. Kisses the top of her head, like he’s done a million times.  

“Alright,” she says, and looks at him, flushed but steady.  If he didn’t know her down to her bones, he’d think she was calm. But she has the same electric look in her eyes that she does before they try a new lift on the ice for the first time: excited and nervous and stubborn as all hell.  He loves that look. “So we’ll tell Dorothy we need a joint session in the next couple of days, yeah?”

“Yeah,” he says.  Clears his throat, and says, “I saw her last week, actually.  I don’t think she’ll be surprised about this.” Tessa’s eyebrows lift, and he says, “Well, I’d just had my entire worldview shift, like, three feet to the right on me, and Danny’s advice was shit.”

Tessa laughs, soft.  He likes the way it feels, this close to her, likes the way her body speaks to his. He always has. It’s why skating with her is so much fun.  She asks, “What did Danny tell you?”

“He said to buy flowers and grovel,” Scott says. “And then he told me he wasn’t surprised.”

“Were _you_ surprised?” she asks, serious.

“A little bit,” he says, slowly.  “It was more the combination, I think? I wasn’t surprised that I love you,” he says, and she smiles, because how could that possibly be a surprise? He’s said it at every competition for more than a decade, after good and bad practices, at the end of phone conversations.  He’s meant it every time. “And I wasn’t surprised that I-- that I want you,” he continues, and his cheeks are burning, but fuck it, he’s done harder things, he can talk about this. “But the two, together,” he says, looking for the words. They feel clumsy, like grade-school French on his tongue in Marseilles.  He pushes on, hopes the translation works, says, “It was the-- the in-love, _this is it_ part.  That threw me more than I expected.”

“Oh,” she says, and nods, a little inanely. “That’s-- oh.  Good,” she says, her voice unsteady. She shakes her head. “I mean, me, too. All of it, but mostly the in-love, _this is it_ part,” she clarifies.  She’s blinking fast, trying not to tear up, and it nearly sets him off as well.

“Good, yeah,” he echoes, his throat thick, like this is somehow understandable: Tessa Virtue loves him. Wants him? Is in love with him, jesus christ.  

Scott thinks: _I’m not going to come back from this_.  

They sit in silence for a moment, neither looking at the other, the car idling at the curb in neutral, emergency brake on. The sky is hot, gone the gunmetal white of high summer, heavy with smog and humidity.  Traffic continues outside. A guy walks his dog down the sidewalk and doesn’t give them a single glance. Scott doesn’t understand how any of it is possible.

“Oh my god,” Tessa says under her breath, and turns her head into the curve of his shoulder, like she’s going to burrow in and live there.  She closes her eyes and laughs a little to herself, one hand coming up to cover her mouth.

“What is it?” he asks.  He’s a little nervous she’s about to say, _I can’t believe you fell for that_.

“I’m supposed to skype Jordan tonight,” she says.  “She’s going to know the second I sign on.” She taps her mouth with one pale finger, and-- yeah.  Her lips look blurred around the edges, like she’s eaten a carton of strawberries, or spent half an hour making out with her partner in a parking lot outside a skating rink like a teenager.

“So tell her, if you want,” he says, feeling reckless and distracted: her mouth is so red.  He leans in to steals a kiss, and he means it to be a pickpocket affair, there and gone, no jury would convict him. His intentions are very nearly innocent. But she opens to him immediately, aiding and abetting, and he gets caught up in deeper plots.  

“Right, wait, hm, no,” he says, after pulling back, after biting lightly at her lower lip, after she catches her fingers in his hair and pulls and his spine lights up, after he thinks, _Surely that counts as enough talking about it_ , after he tries, unsuccessfully, to pull her across the gear shift with her seatbelt still on, after things start to feel hot and dangerous and he remembers that his car has _windows_.  He presses a thumb against her lips; they’re so goddamn obvious.  

“Nope,” he reminds himself, and his voice sounds like it’s covered in dust, grating. “We’re being responsible and talking about this first,” and he’s not sure who he’s addressing.  She rolls her eyes. Parts her lips by a breath, and the tip of his thumb slides against the wet heat of her mouth. There’s the quick shock of her tongue against his skin, and Scott pulls his hand back, says, “I’m not sure I’m the right person to be the voice of restraint in this relationship, you know,” aggrieved. “I’m gonna need some help, Virtue, my impulse control is shit,” and she just laughs.  

“Alright, I’ll be good, I promise,” she agrees, and he makes himself take a breath and let her go, before he can think too deeply about how good she’ll be, and in what context.  “Until we figure it out,” she says. She folds her hands demurely in her lap, and she’s so full of shit.

“Until we figure it out,” he repeats, and tries to look serious and responsible.  It clearly doesn’t work; her eyes crinkle in amusement. He leans back in his seat.  Thinks for a moment about communication, about the clever press of her tongue, about choices, priorities, about what it means to talk about it.

“Patch is going to be impossible,” he says, because he will, and there’s definitely a world outside this car, and most of it involves ice.  Tessa’s face freezes, and she takes a deep breath. “You okay?”

She nods.  “Yeah,” she says.  “Yes. Sorry,” she says.  “I was just thinking about actually telling people, Jordan and Mum and Patch and Marie-France and everyone, the reality of it, and-- it isn’t that I don’t want to,” she says.  She reaches out, and takes his hand. Squeezes, hard. “I want to tell them, I think. I just don’t want it out _there_ ,” she says, tilting her head to the window and the world outside.  “Does that make me a terrible person?”

“No,” he says, certain, because he knows what she means.  It’s loud out there, beyond the windows, and he’s not ready to deal with the noise yet, either.  “Hey,” he says, worried, “Are you upset I told Danny?”

“No,” Tessa says immediately.  “God, no, of course not. He’s family,” she says, and he wonders if she can feel how his breath catches at that.  “I’m going to tell Jordan, if you’re really okay with it?” He nods. “But maybe,” she says, “maybe not everyone else, right away?  I just want it to be ours for a while,” she says.

“I’ll cancel the skywriter,” he says, dry.  She give him a look and he says, “Seriously, T, I get it.  This isn’t anybody’s business but ours, and fuck anyone who says otherwise.”

She turns her head towards him.  She’s smiling, but her eyes are worried.  “Nobody’s business but ours, and Skate Canada’s, and our agents, and coaches, and trainers, and the press--”

Scott shakes his head, emphatic.  “Nope,” he says. “It’s just us,” he says, and he means it, and he’ll do whatever he needs to in order for it to be the truth.  They get to have this. He’s going to make sure they get to have this. “Just you and me, kiddo,” he tells her.

“And Dorothy,” she says.

“And Dorothy,” he concedes, because they get to have this, but he’s definitely going to need some help to avoid fucking it up.

-*-

“Just be deliberate,” Dorothy tells them.  “Talk it through, don’t rush.” They both nod seriously, and Scott’s knee jiggles under Tessa’s hand, like they’re ten and eight, sitting on the bench before a competition.  “You have a strong foundation, and caring for each other is a strength, not a weakness. Remember to breathe and communicate and listen,” she says, and they agree: slow.

-*-

They’re fucking _terrible_ at slow, Scott realizes a week later, falling back against his apartment door, dazed, Tessa’s hands already pulling at his shirt.  She tastes like white wine, like peaches, oh god, and she’s mumbling something against his mouth.

“Hm?” he asks, which is about as much communicating as he can do at the moment.

“Shirt off,” she says, and tugs, teeth in his lower lip, hand twisted in the hem of his shirt.  “Want to touch you.” And that sounds like an amazing idea, but she’s pressed so tightly against him that it’s a physical impossibility.

“Tessa,” he says, mumbles, his mouth against hers, “baby, you have to let me--”

“Baby?” she says, pulling back a little, an eyebrow lifting.

“No?” he asks. It’s not like he’s capable of coming up with anything better at the moment; he can barely remember his own name.  

She tilts her head, considering, and then shrugs like: _sure, whatever_ .  “I don’t mind,” she says, and shoves his shirt up to his armpits.  “Just wasn’t expecting it,” she says, fastening her mouth above his heart, and then, “Will you _please_ take your shirt off now?” like he’s been actively resisting her on that point.  Her hands wander down to his belt, and he takes advantage of the opportunity to pull the offending shirt the rest of the way off.

“Better?” he asks, and slides his hands down to her ass.  Her skirt is some slippery, loose, pleated thing. It’s pretty, and in his way.

“Mhm,” she says, mouth wet against his throat, her arms sliding over his shoulders, and then, “Up?” He pushes her skirt over her ass so he can grip her bare thighs and lifts, easy, and she wraps herself around him like the judges are watching, a perfect band of tension.  He thinks about the bed, but it’s inconveniently located in his bedroom, a practically unknowable distance, so he just turns instead, pinning her back to the door.

“Excellent rotational lift,” she says, teasing, and he says, “You really need to shut up now, or I’m going to fuck up in practice tomorrow and drop you,” and runs one hand from her ass to the inside of her thigh, thumb coming to rest against the thin cotton of her underwear.  The heat of her is incredible.

“You’d never drop me,” she says, and her eyes are big and dark, the green almost eaten alive. “I know you.”

“Yeah?” he says, riding his thumb lightly against her.  He doesn’t have much room to move, pressed as close as he is.  She’s slick under the fabric and he can’t think.

“Yeah,” she says.  Gasps a little. “Oh, god.  Scott. Touch me?”

He nods, resting his head against her collarbone, looking down to where his hand disappears under her skirt.  Pushes her underwear to the side with his thumb. She’s so wet. “Tessa,” he says, and doesn’t know what else makes sense.  He strokes her, and she whines.

“Scott,” she says, and cants her hips hard against his hand.  “I need you to _touch_ me,” and he says, “Okay, baby, okay,” and curls a finger inside, firm.  He watches, can’t look away as her head falls back against the door, like it’s too much effort to hold it up.  She’s so close around him. “More,” she says, her fingernails digging into his shoulder blades, “please, _Scotty_ ,” and he’ll burn the world down for her, if she’ll only keep saying his name like that.  He slides a second finger inside her. Watches her face as he looks for a rhythm, trying to find what pressure works, thumb hard against her clit, his wrist aching from the terrible angle.  

“Oh,” she says, and then, “Oh, fuck, _please_ ,” her face going tense and alive, the heels of her sandals pressing sharp against his back as he does something right. What it is, he has no idea, but she says, “Don’t stop, I’m, oh please, please,” and closes her eyes tight, and he feels the counterpoint of her hips against him, searching.  He twists his wrist, thinks madly about vectors and momentum, watches as she rolls towards the edge. She’s still fully dressed, he realizes, an electric shock of want making him jerk against her, hard. He’s going to make her come, make her scatter and break apart, and he hasn’t even managed to get her out of her bra. He thinks he might die. Thinks it might be worth it as he feels the beginning clench of her pulsing around his fingers, watching her mouth, so bruised and soft, fall open, silent.

“Tessa, holy shit,” he says as she curls away, hard, and then melts against his chest, shaking.  He waits a moment, then slides his hand from between her legs, and she protests, but she’s too relaxed to hold up with one arm.  His sticky hand brushes against her thigh and she eases her legs down around his hips until her feet are back on the floor. Her skirt falls back into place, and he kisses her forehead, her eyelids, the edge of her dazed, smiling mouth.

“You okay, baby?” he asks, and he’s so turned on he might black out, but he can’t stop staring, loving the lax weight of her against him.  

“Let me show you how okay I am,” she says, and takes his hand, still damp, and pulls him back into the bedroom, deliberate and focused and joyful.

It turns out they’re terrible at slow, but really goddamn good at everything else.

-*-

“In the context of almost nineteen years, that was slow,” Tessa tries to argue during their next counseling session.  Dorothy raises her eyebrows, but doesn’t say anything. He isn’t sure if she thinks they’re amusing or a trainwreck. Maybe both.

“You are not going to try to tell me that sex has been on the table for nineteen years,” he says, because he is not that blind. Also, he’s pretty sure that Tessa’s only being defensive because she doesn’t like feeling like she didn’t do her homework, and their homework had pretty much been to keep their hands to themselves, which: whoops.  He can’t bring himself to regret it, though. “It’s been, like, maybe ten.”

“Of course it hasn’t been on the table for nineteen years, I was _seven_ ,” Tessa says, and he tilts his head: legitimate point.  “You know what I mean, though.”

“What do you mean?” Dorothy asks.  She never takes notes during their sessions; Scott likes that it doesn’t feel like an interview, but he imagines that means her memory must be incredible, and that’s terrifying.  

Tessa’s forehead wrinkles.  “Just that-- even if it wasn’t about sex, or being in love, it was still about a relationship, and we’ve worked all the way through it.  So this doesn’t feel new totally new, I guess?” She turns to face him. “Really, the only thing that feels weird is that this doesn’t feel weird at all,” she says.

“Yeah,” he says.  “Me, too,” and he’s pretty sure they sit, smiling at each other, for a stupid amount of time before Tessa says, “Wait, ten years?” and he says, “Yeah, but eighteen-year-old me was a dick, forget about him, it would have been a fucking disaster.”

-*-

It’s not a disaster.  It’s so much the opposite, in fact, that he doesn’t know what to do, sometimes.

He wakes up in the morning, and if it’s the weekend, Tessa’s usually there.  They set some ground rules: no sleeping over during the work week, and never before a competition, because they’re serious about competing, and rule number four still applies.  Sleep is of paramount importance, still, always, and Tess-- Tess sleeps like an eggbeater, turning and kicking and twisting the sheets around her through the night. It’s fine in the summer, but sliding towards fall, it’s less endearing.

“If you keep this up,” he tells her, still half-asleep on a sharp Saturday morning in October, and colder than he’d like to be, “we’re going to have to get a bigger bed, or another comforter, or something.”  She’s still asleep, wrapped up like a burrito in a sheet, two blankets, and his comforter, which is why she doesn’t pick up on the way his breath hitches as he realizes he’s thinking about a time when it won’t just be his bed, and it won’t just be weekends.

“Mn?” she hums, and he says, “Shh, T.  Go back to sleep,” and reappropriates a corner of a blanket. He lays back down, and there’s a line from a song he hasn’t thought about in years playing in his head, and it makes him think about hospital beds, and how glad he is they kept going. He thinks, as he drifts back under: _I’d still choose you_.

But for all his insistence that they can have this-- late mornings in bed, Friday nights dancing to Gladys Knight and the Pips in his kitchen, Sunday afternoon naps on her couch-- he keeps waiting for something to go wrong.  It’s the result of too many years of relying on external judgment for validation, he thinks, and Dorothy tilts her head at an angle he reads as, _I’m impressed_ , when he tells her this.  He wakes up most mornings, happy like he can’t remember being in years, and it feels sometimes like he spends the whole day holding his breath, just waiting for the feeling to dissipate.  Waits for a morning when he’ll snap at Tessa to hurry up, or a practice when they can’t find their sync, when Marie-France has to pull him aside and tell him, quietly, that they need to end early and go their separate ways for a few days.  He waits for Tess to stop sleeping over on weekends, for her to ask for space, to stop laughing. He waits for his attention to wander, waits to feel guilty for pouring himself onto the ice. Waits for the frustrations of the rink to show up on her couch, or his kitchen, or in their bed.  

But it just-- doesn’t happen.  They both go quiet and tense, sometimes, but not to any degree more than they ever have before.  Less, maybe, because they’re each so fiercely focused on not fucking up. And it-- whatever disaster he’s so afraid of-- keeps not happening as they win in Japan, and then in France. And eventually, after the Grand Prix Final and Worlds-- eventually, he doesn’t know what he was waiting for.

“One down,” he tells her on the flight back from Helsinki.  They’ve been travelling for eight hours already: Helsinki to Munich, layover, Munich to Geneva, layover.  And now it’s another seven hours over the Atlantic to Montreal. He’s pulled up the armrest and she’s leaning against him like she’s done on flights since they were teenagers. He’s rubbing his thumb along the straight raised line of a scar on her palm under the safety of the cheap felt blanket over their laps.

She traps his thumb in her hand; squeezes, says, “One to go,” and then, quietly, “And then what?” and-- oh, maybe that’s the disaster: the long stretch of future past Korea. He doesn’t recognize it; it looks different than he thought it would.

“And then,” he says, and shrugs.  Angles his shoulders so he can look at her more clearly.  She washed her face the last time she got up to use the restroom, and she always looks younger without makeup. Her glasses have a fingerprint smudge at the bottom of one lens.  “I don’t know, T,” he admits. This should really scare him more than it does, actually. “And then we catch up on Netflix?”

“We could take up rock climbing,” she suggests.  “Roller derby.”

“I think that’s just for women, though.  Maybe competitive karaoke?” he suggests, and then says, “You could go back to school,” because he knows she hates not finishing what she started.  “Go for a doctorate or whatever, you nerd.”

She shakes her head.  “No,” she says, “not a PhD, I don’t have a dissertation in me.  And anyway, I think an MBA would be more useful, maybe?” She raises a shoulder, and says, “But it’s been almost three years since I’ve been a student. I don’t know.”  He wraps his hand more fully around hers under the blanket. “Do you think you want to coach, after?” she asks.

“Maybe,” he says, because he can see how that might fit.  “I don’t want to show Danny up, though, because you know I would.”  Tessa laughs quietly. “But yeah, coaching might be okay.”

“You’d be amazing at it,” she says, earnest.  “You’ll be great at whatever you want to do, after.  I know it.”

“Yeah?” he says, and thinks: _this is not the moment, Moir_ , but when has that ever stopped him?  Never, that’s when. “I think,” he says, and he can’t look at her, can only look at where their hands are joined, hidden under the blanket, “I think what I’d like to do after is try to marry you, if you’ll let me.”

He hears her inhale, sharp, and her nails dig into his hand.  “Holy shit, Scotty,” she says, and he has to look up and see if that’s a good holy shit or what.  She’s pale, and the faint freckles she hates stand out against her cheeks. “Are you, is this--”

He shakes his head, and he can’t tell if she’s disappointed or not.  Says, “No, I mean, not if you don’t want, I don’t have anything,” a ring, he doesn’t have a ring, so it isn’t a _proposal_ -proposal, because he might be impulsive, but surely he’s not that bad. “It’s more of an intelligence-gathering mission?”

She bursts out laughing.  Has to bury her face in the sleeve of his hoodie to muffle the sound so she doesn’t wake the middle-aged woman sleeping next to her.  He tries not to take it as a bad sign.

“T?” he asks, after a minute, her shoulders still shaking with giggles.  “Shh, T, you okay?”

“Mmhm,” she says against his bicep, and then lifts her face.  Rests her sharp chin on his shoulder. “I’m sorry, I’m good, I promise.”  She presses a quick kiss to his cheek-- the most she’ll do in public-- and says, “I definitely think you should try to marry me,” soft against his ear. “I think you’ll be amazing at that, too.”

“Yeah?” he asks, mouth dry. He swallows.  Tries to act like he doesn’t want to pick her up and spin her around until she’s dizzy like they’re in some overplayed melodramatic musical number.  “Well, if you think so,” he shrugs, and feels her laugh in a soft breath. “I might give it a try. After,” he adds.

“After,” she says, and her smile is small, but it’s the most gorgeous thing he’s seen in his whole life.

-*-

He texts Danny when they land, waiting at the baggage carousel.  She has her bags, but his navy duffle is still missing, which is always what seems to happen.

 **is preposal a word** , he asks.

 _It is three in the fukcing morning, what is the matter with youo_ , he gets back.

He waits, because sometimes it takes Danny a while, but he’ll get there, and then his phone buzzes with, _Wait what did you do_ , and then, _YOU DIDNT_ , and a moment later, _On an airplane?? Youre an asshole._

 **i didnt,** he sends.

**mostly**

**the airplane part was not ideal**

Reading his brother’s increasingly profanity-laden responses aloud to Tessa over the next hour is only about the fifth best thing that’s happened to him in the past forty-eight hours, but it’s still pretty great.

-*-

 _It has to be enough_ , he thinks ten months later, out of breath and electrified and desperate, Tessa a shaking line of tension at his side, _it has to be,_ because it was as close to perfect a skate as he’s ever felt, and they get to have this.  After twenty years, after silver, after pain, after two years of focused work and rules and holding hands under airplane blankets: they get to have this.  There’s the moment’s silence, and he thinks, _I need my fucking glasses_ , because he can’t make out the numbers on the screen.  He squints. T’s knee jolts beneath his hand, and Patch says, “It’s enough,” but he doesn’t believe it until the disembodied voice says, “Currently in first place,” over the loudspeaker, and he erupts.

-*-

It’s a sharp Tuesday morning in October, and he wakes up warm, because Tessa won’t toss and turn and steal all the blankets if he wraps himself around her back like an octopus.  It’s an arrangement to which he has no real objection, even if it means he wakes up with her hair in his mouth more often than not.

He props himself up on an elbow and brushes the strands off her bare shoulder.  Presses a kiss to the blade, opens his mouth and scrapes his teeth lightly at the sharp wing of bone and muscle.  She smells like sleep, like sex. Tastes like salt on his tongue. He busies himself by sucking a mark into her skin.

“Mnfptf,” she complains, but not with any real strength.  He feels her roll her shoulder, and then she jerks and sits up, naked to the waist in the half-hearted grey morning light, a half-awake Aphrodite rising from the waves, and says, “Scotty, god, what are you still doing here?  Did we oversleep our alarms?” because he’s usually up and at the gym before sunrise, and she gets up when he leaves.

“No,” he says, and pulls her back against his chest, half-leaning against the headboard.  Her pulse is going a million miles an hour, like it does when she jolts out of a dream. “It’s okay, T, I told them I’m coming in a little late today.  And you said you don’t have anything until eleven, right?”

“Yeah,” she says, tilting her head back against his shoulder.  Her breathing calms, and she interlaces their fingers, resting their joined hands on her ribcage.  He looks down at them, and she does, too, he thinks. The ring is new, and blood-warm from the heat of her body.  “So, what,” she asks after a moment, “You just felt like being lazy this morning?”

He considers, and then says, “I wouldn’t say I’m feeling lazy, no,” and she turns, rising up on her knees to straddle his hips, and no, lazy is not the word, not when she rises over him like that.  Not when she bites her lip, and then his, and rides against him so slowly that orgasm, when it finally comes, is almost indistinguishable from the frustration that came before.

“I think,” she says, her mouth moving in damp pants against his collarbone, and it’s enough to make his dick twitch weakly, still inside her.

“You shouldn’t,” he tells her, because god knows he can’t.

She smacks his shoulder half-heartedly.  “I think,” she says again, “that you should take the whole day off, and I will, too.”

He kisses her forehead.  “Yeah?” he asks, reaching for his phone.  He’ll do it right now, if she wants. They’ll never leave this bed again.  “What should I tell them?”

“I don’t know,” Tessa says.  She stretches up, presses a kiss behind his ear.  “Just tell them you’re too busy to come in.”

He hums, and taps out a message over her shoulders.  “It’s not a lie,” he observes, and tosses his phone back on the bedside table.  It misses, and lands on the floor. He doesn’t care. He holds Tess by the hips as he slides forward so he has enough room to lay back, and then rolls them both so they’re on their sides.  

“It’s not,” she agrees.  Wraps a long leg around him and presses close.  “We’re both very busy,” and every word is true.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Since I promised, here's the playlist Scott totally doesn't have in his head in the third chapter.](https://open.spotify.com/user/a7pb4w64e6g4spe8sa9ajxopl/playlist/7LqMkeoUp00RFMvL13pXnh?si=6BbF980qTM-nuMheH_V6Uw)
> 
>  
> 
> And you are NEVER going to get this quote, so it's worth fifty Internet points. And I'll give you some hints:
> 
> 1\. It's not poetry.  
> 2\. But the person does write poetry.  
> 3\. I reference the author and the line a million times in this chapter.
> 
> Good luck.


End file.
